CHI95FA161 · Beech A35
Beech A35 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From C24 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95FA161
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech A35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N8480A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C24To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At another airport, days prior to the accident, the airplane was fueled and parked outside. After the airplane was returned to its home base, it was parked in a hangar. On the day of the accident when the airplane was pre-flighted fuel sumps were drained and no water or contaminants were found. It was then flown on a local flight for less than one hour. The airplane was then re-fueled, after which the fuel sumps were not drained. On the next flight the airplane suffered a total loss of engine power during initial climb. The pilot was unable to restore power and conducted a forced landing. The airplane slid off the end of the runway (landing gear retracted), impacted trees and caught on fire. Subsequent examination failed to reveal any pre-existing mechanical anomalies in the engine or airframe. Fuel samples examined from most recent fueling pump failed to find water or other contaminants.
Probable cause
fuel contamination (water), and the pilot's inadequate aircraft preflight. A factor was trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95FA161
- Event ID
- 20001207X03421
- Case number
- CHI95FA161
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-05-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ca95b71a3acc4c41eae8bba1d3667405fb562b682d736d9cb145608dc3a215f8; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:15:58.333Z.